Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:MARA), a firm focused on supporting and securing the Bitcoin ecosystem, published unaudited bitcoin (BTC) production and miner installation updates for November 2023.
Fred Thiel, Marathon’s chairman and CEO, said:
“In November, we increased our domestic energized hash rate 20% to 23.1 exahashes as energization of the facility in Garden City, Texas is complete. We have now reached our 23 exahash goal and extended our lead as the largest bitcoin miner in North America.”
Thiel added:
“Outside the US, we made further progress in Abu Dhabi where we now have 2.5 exahashes online. This total includes 10,000 rigs energized at our second, larger facility in Masdar City, and the remaining 4.6 exahashes are expected to be online by January 2024. Our new joint venture in Paraguay also started up in November with 1,170 miners energized representing 0.2 exahash. The full 1.1 exahashes are expected to be online by early Q2 2024.”
As noted in the update:
“With our increasing hash rate and continued efficiency gains, we produced 1,187 bitcoin in November, down 1% from October against a 9% sequential increase in network difficulty. This total includes 33 bitcoin from our 20% share of the JV in Abu Dhabi and 3.5 bitcoin from our 80% share of the JV in Paraguay. In the US, we mined 1,151 bitcoin in November which includes approximately 135 bitcoin or 12.0% of the total from transaction fees due to increased network activity.”
As stated in the announcement:
“We continue to explore innovative ways to lower our power costs and increase our mix of sustainable energy. Our landfill pilot in Utah is powered by waste methane gas with an average cost per coin below $10,000. The new joint venture in Paraguay is 100% powered by hydroelectricity with power costs below $0.04 per kilowatt hour. We are also making progress on finding ways to leverage the heat off take from Bitcoin mining to further improve the economics around renewable energy development. We look forward to sharing more details on the many innovative projects that we are exploring in the months ahead.”
In November, approximately 27,200 of Marathon’s Bitcoin miners (c. 3.8 EH/s) were energized at Applied Digital’s facility in Garden City, Texas. This energization increased the company’s domestic operating fleet “by 17% to approximately 184,400 Bitcoin miners, theoretically capable of producing approximately 23.2 EH/s, according to the manufacturer’s specifications as of December 1, 2023.”
As of November 30, the company holds “a total of 14,025 unrestricted BTC. Marathon opted to sell 700 BTC or 59% of monthly production to cover operating expenses. The Company intends to sell a portion of its bitcoin holdings in future periods to support monthly operations, manage its treasury, and for general corporate purposes. The previous hedges expired at the end of November and were primarily settled in BTC. There were no active hedges as of November 30, 2023.”
Marathon held $273.1 million “in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet at month end, all of which was unrestricted.”
During November, the combined balance of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and bitcoin increased “from $620.3 million to $802.3 million at November 30, 2023.”